25km, Aquarium Visit, The "New" Lawnmower

Well first of all, I powered off beaker.muppetz.com last night.  That Virtual Machine has served muppetz.com and tjharman.com website for the last ~9 years.  But now all the mail lives on a DigitalOcean Droplet, and my websites are hosted on the mini-server in the cupboard under the stairs.  Migration of everything seems to have gone OK, Sarah's work emails are still working which is the main thing.  And I can still type this story.

So Friday, yes Friday.  Friday was Chris' funeral.  Thank you very much Dad for going on my behalf, it sounds like it was a great sendoff for a great friend.  Farewell buddy, I'm gonna miss you.

Friday night Sarah came into work to meet up with her friend David for drinks.  I took the kids and Biscuit to Ahuriri to play for an hour, then went home and ordered Pizza due to a cock up in communications.  Saturday morning I was up bright and early to go meet Peter and Adrian to collect the wood from the Golf Club.  Peter had teed up (see what I did there?) some cheap wood, $60 a bin so I got 3 bins and Adrian got 2.  We took the ProntoMobile and the trailer to the golf course, loaded up my 3 bins, came home and dropped them off (good woofing from Guard Dog Biscuit) and then collected Adrian's and dropped them at his.  After that it was time, time that I had been dreading.  In fact I was sure it wasn't going to happen because I'd had a big lump in my throat all Friday afternoon and when I went to bed Friday night I was sure I was getting majorly sick.  But no, Saturday I was fine so it was time for my 25km run.

Holy shit it was hard!  I was fine up until about the 22/23km mark I guess?  Then it all just started to get really hard.  Maybe it was because I knew the finish was close, but yea it felt a lot harder than the previous two 20+km runs I'd done.  When I got home I was very stiff and sore, especially my left knee was quite tender.  Which is bizzare because previously my right knee had given me a lot of grief and it was just tickety boo.  Anyway as you can see down on the Strava Tracker on the front page, I did it!  The run itself was really nice, it was quite overcast so I wasn't too hot and sweaty like I've been on previous ones.  The path up the river on one side, then over the bridge, then past the pub and back down the river track to home.  The bridge is a bit scary, it's very narrow (I think it's a 1 way bridge) and there's nowhere for a person to actually run that's not the road.  Still I just stuck very carefully to the side and no one clobbered me.  And man running past the pub was hard, seeing a few people out there having a nice cold beer.

I got home and Beth's friend Emma was over having a playdate.  Theo and I went to Greenmeadows to collect the lawnmower and then he helped me wash all the bird poo off that we'd collected the night before at Ahuriri by parking under a lamppost.  Doh.

Sunday we went out to the Farmers Market, then took advantage of our new Aquarium membership and had a family morning there looking at everything. Then back home I spent a fair chunk of time trying to get on top of the garden at home, cutting back hedges and then did the mowing.  Far out I'm glad I took the mower in, he said it needed lots of minor work and new blades.  But mowing with it was night and day, it just cruised over lawns it previously would have struggled with, the grass catcher just kept filling up, not jamming like it usually does.  It was great.  Anyway so yes did a lot of garden work.  Looks like the Feijoas are coming in too, they're starting to drop around the base of the tree.  Guess I know what we'll be doing the next few weekends!  Come and earn some pocket money childrens!!

Tim